STARTO ArduinoIDE Robot Car Kit, Brown, 12-Pound

The 1Sheeld is a great concept with some very solid features. It was pretty easy to set up and start using the shields with the Arduino Uno. At first I absolutely loved the 1Sheeld. But my intent on buying this item was for the game pad shield to control an RC vehicle. The initial set up and sketch for this was extremely easy and it worked great. However, with this came two problems. #1 the Bluetooth signal distance is pretty short, I mean less than 50ft short. #2 came after finding the limitation of the signal distance. When it lost connection to the android device, the last command my RC car received was forward and off it went without me able to stop it via the game pad my daughter and I chased it until it crashed into a rock pile.I went to the 1sheeld forums and posted a question in regard to this and was told that the Bluetooth on this unit is passive and there is no way to check to make sure that the Bluetooth is still connected in the sketch. http://www.1sheeld.com/topic/118/if-1sheeld-is-connected#474. They said they may have a work around and would publish in the next version but I think this is something that needs to be a little more widely known for people wanting to use this for RC type devices.It is a great concept, but some more thought should have went into connection testing. Unfortunately as the Game Pad and RC type function is what I bought this for and it is not currently safe to use on RC equipment, this may be a deal breaker for me and it may be going back to Amazon. I just need to decide if I can use it in any of my other projects.11-17-14 UpdateMy original review was three stars due to the issues mentioned above. I have increased my review to four stars. I just wanted to put an update here. As mentioned 1sheeld said they were working on a work around and a fix for the out of range issue. 1sheeld has contacted me since my review through several mediums. They answered my question on the forum, they emailed me a possible fix with supporting files for the app and the library and they sought me out on twitter just to make sure I checked my email. They put in a lot of effort to get in touch with me and that says a lot about their company, to me anyway. They have reached out to me to be a beta tester of this fix and as soon as I have time, hopefully this weekend, I will test the fix for them and report back. I will keep the 1sheeld just based on their efforts of support in this matter even if the fix doesnt work right away. As someone who managed customer service centers for over a decade this kind of support speaks volumes about the company and this is one company that has my support in return. Dont hesitate to buy this item, even if it does have a few bugs they will work with you to make it right. I will come back to update after the fix is tested.1/1/15 - UPDATEI wanted to start of the new year with a good note so I though I would update the review here. The good people at 1Sheeld have updated the firmware and the app to support checking for active connection. with the use of an if/else statement you can make sure the arduino stops if the 1sheeld is out of range. Keep in mind that the bluetooth distance is short but at least there is a way to shut off if you go out of range. I have updated my review to 5 stars to reflect the function of the shield and the excellent support from the company. Dont hesitate on this one it is a good shield for a multitude of projects.

This is a really great shield to allow your Arduino to do things that were extremely difficult or impossible in the past.I invested $50 in the cheapest Android tablet I could find so that I could experiment with this shield and I am really glad I did.For me, Voice Recognition is a feature that I've really wanted in an Arduino and there hasn't been an effective way to accomplish this. With the 1Sheeld, I've already spun up several sketches in minutes that allow me to control lights, motors, etc on my Arduinos just by speaking through the tablet.There is a great wealth of sample code via the company website that should allow anyone to get started easily with the shield.I haven't even used all of the many, many features and I would still highly recommend this shield for anyone looking to expand what can be done with the amazing Arduino platform.

DOES NOT WORK FOR ANY DEVICE. BEEN WORKING ON IT FOR 2 DAYS TRYING TO GET THIS TO WORK. TUTORIALS ARE HORRIBLE. DO NOT BUY ITS WASTE OF YOUR MONEY.

Cool prototyping tool, and I can see how you could use it to do some cool stuff.I think they really missed the bus by not including a TFT shield, though. That would have been supremely useful.

4 stars for now, but 5 star product. Why?5 star product because this thing is so easy to use (watch the youtube videos brought to you by the makes of 1sheeld.) and SO versatile. So many uses.-1 star because the company's site is down, so you cant access the forums fot help / ideas, you cant access their tutorial center, or download center. Good news is they posted all their libraries and the android app code on github, so kudos to 1sheeld for having a backup plan, atleast you can grab the libraries. Also kudos for utilizing and promoting code bender, if you dont want to or cant install arduino ide, use codebender. I wish i could give this 4.5 stars but not possible, when site is back up ill give 5. Great product. I would buy it agan in a second :)Update 4.13.15 1sheelds site is back up, 5 stars, love the 1sheeld!

PROS:It claims to do all kinds of cool things once you know which ones work and which ones don't, and how to use the ones that work. Promised capabilities include having your Arduino do everything from flashing an LED via Bluetooth to making phone calls, using only this device, example code provided, and your Android phone.CONS:(1) Library does not follow Arduino naming conventions, which makes it confusing to get installed.(2) Uploading firmware to the Arduino requires flipping a slide switch back and forth to change USB operation. They could learn a lot from the Arduino community, including the Teensy which mastered this technique long ago.(3) heavy use of the serial port by the shield's firmware seem to interfere with IDE debugging such as in Visual Micro.(4) The documentation and form factor appear to suggest the Uno or larger boards are required. There is nothing in the upper level documentation suggesting embedded interfaces such as I2C are workable for connecting the shield to the Arduino (Nano / Lilypad for example).(5) Documentation and example code contain numerous errors, and grammatical hints that it was written by someone whose first language is not English. Clearly, the example code is incomplete and will not compile as presented.(6) Functions are not fully developed, but updates seem to be provided only with a working knowledge of github. Unless you're a software weenie who knows this stuff, with the patience to "trial and error" program on your own without RTFM, you're not gonna be happy spending this kind of money for a Bluetooth device, and having this capability dangled just out of your reach.